FOREWORD

FOREWORD

"O YE WHO BELIEVE, when ye meet the
marshaled hosts of the infidels, turn not
your backs to them:
Who so shall turn his back to them on
that day, unless he turn aside to fight ,or
to rally some other troop, shall incur
wrath from God; Hell shall be his abode
and wretched the journey thither."--
Koran.

The region of Mindanao and Sulu is one of the oldest battlegrounds in the world. Until the coming of America, these dark jungles and blue seas knew only the law of the strong, whose song was the song of the kris.

Men of all creeds and colors have scrambled for a foothold in Mindanao--from India, Ceylon, Borneo, Celebes, Java, China, Japan, Portugal, France, Spain, Holland, England. Their bones moulder there, and only the spirits of intrepid adventurers remain. They reckoned not on the courage of the defenders of this soil.

East meets West today in peace upon this centuries-old field of battle. Still in possession of his beloved isles remains the Moro; with this bosque warrior remains the American who finally conquered him.

In 1899 the Spaniards laid down their weary swords and gave over the task of subjugation of the Moros to the Krag rifles of America. The opening gun of the Spanish-American War found Spain holding a few precarious positions in Mindanao, Palawan and Sulu. This to show for more than 300years of bloody conflict! The Moros controlled the balance of the southern Philippines.

The close of the unsuccessful Spanish conquest of Moroland marked the beginning of the end of one of the most remarkable resistance in the annals of military history. The Moslems had staged a bitter and uninterrupted warfare against the might of Spain for a period of 377 years. It is doubtful if this record has been equalled in the whole bloody history of military aggression. The Dons, accustomed to the easy conquests of Peru and Mexico, met their match and more in the jungles of Mindanao.

As a fighting man of the highest caliber, the Moro has won for himself a distinguished place. This mighty krisman of the jungle has woven a thread of red into the fabric of the history of the East Indian Archipelago.

In common with other savage people, the Moros were ruthless and brutal and cruel, and they spared none in their crimson path. They lived in a stern age, during those days that preceded the coming of the Spaniards. Down through the years sailed the war praos of the Moros--ravaging, slaying and enslaving. Always they were masters of the Sulu Sea.

The Moros successfully defended their island empire from a period a century before the Christian era until their power was finally broken by the dismounted cavalrymen of Uncle Sam at the battle of Bud Bagsak in 1913.

The history of the Moros is a history of continuous warfare. Other opponents lacking, the Mohammedans fought with their own kinsmen. War was relaxation. To die was an earned privilege. Their history is Kris against Kris; Kris against Toledo blade; Kris against Krag.

The Moro was soldier, sailor, fisherman, pirate, slave-trader, pearl-diver, navigator; he was a composite portrait of competent savage. He ruled with cruelty in a sternly disputed domain. Piracy was his profession. Murder and rapine were his lighter amusement.

Nicolo Conti speaks of him in 1430:
"The inhabitants of Java and Sumatra exceed every other person in cruelty. They regard killing a man as a mere jest; nor is any punishment allotted to such a deed. If anyone purchase a new sword and wish to try it, he will thrust it into the breast of the first person he meets. The passers-by examine the wound, and praise the skill of the person who inflicted it, if he thrust in the blade direct."

Consistency was ever a virtue of the Moro, for Sawyer speaks of him again in 1900:
"Trained to arms from his earliest youth, he excels in the management of the lance, buckler and sword. These weapons are his inseparable companions. The typical Moro is never unarmed. He fights equally well on foot, on horseback, in his fleet war canoe or in the water, for he swims like a fish and dives like a penguin. Absolutely indifferent to bloodshed or suffering, he will take the life of a slave or a stranger, merely to try the keenness of a new weapon."

By our standards, the Moro was a barbarian, but it must be remembered that he occupied an uncertain throne on the crest of Malayan-Mongoloid invasions of a rude and uncultured country. The age of his power was a dangerous one of "conquer and live and leave no opposition alive on the back trail."

And yet, these bloodthirsty pirates were not lacking in sympathy. They waged a just war according to their lights and they were beset upon all sides by land-grabbing aggressors. Let the reader reflect upon one pathetic incident of the American occupation of Sulu. After listening patiently to General Bate's glowing description of the rich and powerful United States of America, the Sultan of Sulu asked, If all of this be true, why then do you seek my poor little islands?"

To which General Bates made no reply.

In his defense of the religion and customs of Islam against the militant priests of Spain, the Moro set a new historical precedent. He survived. His religion survived. The Mayas, the Aztecs and the Incas fell before the Toledo steel of the Spaniards, and their language and institutions perished with them. Their temples were destroyed and their literature burned by over-zealous bishops of the Romish church. A few of their cities remain desolated sepulchers of an ancient civilization which melted before the fanaticism of the conquistadores.

Not so with the Moros; sturdy and intact, their religion still flourishes on the shores of Sulu. The conquistadores came, fought vainly, and retired. The Moros remain.

As a civilizing agency, the position of the Moros is doubtful. As fighting men, they take first rank in the pages of martial history.

It is as fighting men that we should judge them.